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Tuesday, 26 July 2016

Matcha Green Tea Vivid Review

Despite my best efforts, I've never enjoyed the taste of green tea. I say best efforts because I’d love to include green tea in my daily diet, purely for its health benefits and of course it’s low in calories.

However, there is one type of green tea I can drink and that’s Matcha. I’ve been making matcha from a green powder and mixing it with hot coconut milk (not the proper way, but I like it). You can also drink it cold as I discovered one day last week.

While browsing around looking at the coconut water, I was intrigued to see a few brands selling cold Match Green tea. I honed in on a brand called Vivid who have 3 varieties: Lemon, Original and Elderflower Matcha. They all have less than 10 calories per carton. I love lemon so my decision was made.

If you want to learn more about the health benefits of Matcha, this site has loads of info. But briefly, Matcha Green tea is nutritionally superior to regular green tea whereby one cup of matcha is equivalent to around 10 cups of regular green tea.

Another reason I’ve been keen to drink Matcha is because it contains an amino acid called L-Theanine. This amino acid helps produce a calm, relaxed and settled mind but it also helps keep you alert. As I’ve been majorly stressed with exams recently, this is just the kind of support I need.

This Matcha has a long shelf life with an expiry date of November 2017. So although you can keep it in a cupboard, it should be drunk cold.

It’s been hot recently in London so I was looking forward to quenching my thirst with this Matcha green tea. I drank it from the carton straight out of the fridge so it was nice and cold. I also poured some out into a glass so you can see what colour it is. I was expecting a murky green but it’s actually quite a pale pleasant looking green.

So onto the taste. Well, what can I say? It tastes like green tea. It does have a mild lemon flavour which I liked, however, I have to say, it's just not my cup of tea! But anyone who likes green tea hot or cold I am sure will really enjoy this matcha tea.

For a mild caffeine boost topped up with L-Theanine, and with NO sugar, this is a fantastic choice for those who need a bit of extra mental clarity.

It contains 1,000mg of Matcha green tea, water, natural lemon flavour and vitamin C. Each 330ml carton has 22mg of caffeine which is around a quarter of the caffeine you’d find in an espresso shot. It’s also just under a quarter of the caffeine in a can of Red Bull.

You can find Vivid Matcha green tea in Whole Foods, Holland & Barrett, Waitrose, Ocado, Planet Organic, Nisa, Selfridges and Amazon and it costs on average £1.89 per 330ml carton.